Off Limits. Clare Connelly
he murmurs, his eyes hooked to mine. ‘Why?’
I stare at it and swirl the glass, sipping the alcohol and wincing as the slightly medicinal flavour assaults my back palette. ‘They’re weird. Plasticky.’
‘Not the real ones.’
‘No.’
I swallow, wondering at the way my gut is churning and my pulse is racing. I need to bring it back to business. It’s the reason I’m here with him.
‘The server in Canada can pick up the slack, but it’s going to slow things down.’
‘By how much?’
‘Just a few seconds’ lag. It’s unavoidable, given the distance.’
‘A few seconds?’ He shakes his head. ‘There’s nowhere closer?’
‘Not that can handle this amount of data.’
He throws his drink back in one motion. ‘And Wolf thinks that’s acceptable?’
He says his name with obvious derision.
‘You think he’d go to the effort of flying out here to propose it if he did?’
‘Well, he’s banging you, right?’
I can’t hide the angry intake of breath. Sure, he’s always rude. And demanding. And I’ve learned not to give a shit. I don’t expect the same courtesy from Jack Grant that most people pepper into life. But this is too far even for him...even when we’ve been flirting all night.
‘His suggestion is professional,’ I return softly. A warning lurks in my words. Does he hear it?
Apparently not. Jack is like a cat with a mouse.
‘But you are fucking him?’
‘God, Jack,’ I snap, standing up.
His eyes follow the fluidity of my movement. They’re narrowed. Assessing. He’s reading me like a book. But I’m too angry to care. Too worked up, as well. He’s halfway to being drunk, and he’s obnoxious, and since he pulled me hard against his body I’m a bit mushy.
I hide my mushiness, though. I hide it behind a veil of anger. ‘That’s none of your damned business.’
His eyes flick to mine. There’s a lazy arrogance in his features but anger palpitates off him.
‘He works for me. You work for me. If you’re fucking him I want to know.’
‘What I do in my own time, and with whom, is up to me. Until the day it starts affecting my job performance you should just butt out.’ I jut my chin, my eyes sparking with his. ‘Got it?’
He looks calm, controlled, but I know there’s an undercurrent of emotion just beneath the handsome surface. Because I know Jack. Probably better than anyone else on earth.
‘You don’t strike me as coy,’ he says.
‘Because I’m not.’
I step backwards. The wall is behind me. I brush against it, feeling cornered and unbelievably confused and turned on by this strange turn of events.
‘So answer the question.’
‘Am I fucking Wolf?’ My question emerges as a husk in the night.
‘Yeah.’ He moves forward. An infinitesimal step. ‘You know everything there is to know about me, don’t you? So why keep your secrets?’
I open my mouth to say something snappy, but shut it again. He’s right. I know a lot about him. Not the ‘everything’ he claims, but a lot.
‘You could always lock your door if you want to be more private about your love-life.’
‘Sex-life,’ he interjects swiftly, on autopilot, and I know it’s because of Lucy that he’s so emphatic on this point.
I don’t know anything about his wife. I presume she was a nice enough person—although agreeing to marry Jack does make me question both her sanity and her judgement. But maybe he was different before she died. Maybe his bastard impulses weren’t so apparent?
‘So you’re going to live out the rest of your life like this? Moving from one woman to another, never getting to know a thing about them beyond their cup size and their sexual proclivities.’
His eyes drop to my breasts and I can tell he is assessing my cup size. Crap. My nipples strain hard against the flimsy fabric of my dress—it’s too tight for a bra, and sadly I don’t really need one.
His smile is self-satisfied and I want to slap it off his face. I fight the urge to cross my arms and cover my involuntary reaction.
‘I’m trying to get to know more about you right now,’ he says.
My pulse is hammering hard in my veins. His revolving-door bedroom flashes before me in an instant. The number of mornings I’ve arrived to find him asleep after a busy night of... Best I don’t imagine that right now.
‘Are you afraid I’ll judge you?’
I open my eyes to find him right in front of me, his head bent, his body just a hair’s breadth from me. A soft moan escapes me before I can catch it.
‘You? You think you’d have any right to judge me after parading half of England through here?’
‘Not half of England,’ he murmurs, a smile shifting over his face. ‘Half of London, maybe.’
‘How do you justify it?’ I ask, feeling a dangerous pull towards a line of questioning my brain is shouting at me to back away from. ‘You think Lucy would be happy that you’re fucking your way through a smorgasbord of women just because you won’t have an actual relationship? Is there a sliding scale of monogamy that the dead expect?’
A muscle jerks in his cheek. I recognise that I’m stirring him up and still I don’t stop. I’m angry, too! He doesn’t have a monopoly on thwarted desire and pent-up frustration.
It feels good to goad him! So good!
‘You think what you do is fair to these women?’
His smile spreads slowly, but it is cold, angry. ‘I don’t hear any complaints.’
Boom! It’s the proverbial match to the fuel of my anger. I explode.
‘You boot them out before you even know their names half the time! Where, exactly, would they lodge their complaint? My God, Jack. Of all the chauvinistic, selfish, careless—’
He lifts a finger to my lips, silencing me with the touch. His eyes on mine are intent. Heat builds inside my blood, at fever pitch now.
‘You know...’ His fingers dip into my drink, fishing out the bright red orb at its base. ‘You have a tendency to be judgemental.’
My sharp intake of breath is dangerous, given his finger’s closeness to my mouth. He runs it across my lower lip and I don’t pull away. He holds up the cherry with his other hand. My eyes slip to it of their own accord.
‘Haven’t you ever discovered that you like something you thought you hated? Haven’t you ever been wrong?’
I shake my head, not really sure of the question he’s asking. He surprises me by lifting the cherry to his own lips and sucking it into his mouth. I watch for a moment, and as his finger drops from my mouth I try to say something. I’m not sure what, and I’ll never have a chance to find out. He brings his lips to mine, pressing the cherry into my mouth, rolling it around before sucking it back into his and crushing it.
The flavour is all around me and I no longer care. Because it is dwarfed by something else: the taste of him. Cherry flavour is on his tongue, evaporating in the flame of our kiss.
His lips crush mine, silencing any words, sucking them out of me, and a new heat spreads in my body. His